I’ll have a lot more on this study later, but for now just a short rebuttal.
I believe this study is hopelessly flawed due to the fact that the authors take the data from the weather stations at face value without considering bias due to measurement error or siting error, both of which are rampant in the US surface station network.
Read my report at left.
While not all situations with poorly sited weather stations affect trends, a weather station like this one at the University of Arizona’s parking lot in front of the atmospheric science department is represenative of the kinds of problems that would lead to an increased number of new high temperature records set.
Plus then there’s the error problem. For example we saw this summer that Honolulu set new record highs, but they turned out to be in error. The kicker is that NOAA let the records stand anyway! The problem is that a number of climate stations are at airports. Watch this NWS employee say on record that these airport weather stations are “placed for aviation purposes…not necessarily for climate purposes.”
So take this NCAR study with a grain of salt, since the authors did not address any of these issues.
From NCAR: Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across U.S.
BOULDER—Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.
“Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States,” says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting.”
This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009.
Each bar shows the proportion of record highs (red) to record lows (blue) for each decade. The 1960s and 1970s saw slightly more record daily lows than highs, but in the last 30 years record highs have increasingly predominated, with the ratio now about two-to-one for the 48 states as a whole. [ENLARGE] (©UCAR, graphic by Mike Shibao.) News media terms of use*
The study, by authors at NCAR, Climate Central, The Weather Channel, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor, the Department of Energy, and Climate Central.
If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves.
A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station’s history. The authors used a quality control process to ensure the reliability of data from thousands of weather stations across the country, while looking at data over the past six decades to capture longer-term trends.
This decade’s warming was more pronounced in the western United States, where the ratio was more than two to one, than in the eastern United States, where the ratio was about one-and-a-half to one.
The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs. This indicates that much of the nation’s warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.
In addition to surveying actual temperatures in recent decades, Meehl and his co-authors turned to a sophisticated computer model of global climate to determine how record high and low temperatures are likely to change during the course of this century.
The modeling results indicate that if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a “business as usual” scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100. The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.
The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact. Climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions. The model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years.
However, the model results are important because they show that, in all likely scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, record daily highs should increasingly outpace record lows over time.
“If the climate weren’t changing, you would expect the number of temperature records to diminish significantly over time,” says Claudia Tebaldi, a statistician with Climate Central who is one of the paper’s co-authors. “As you measure the high and low daily temperatures each year, it normally becomes more difficult to break a record after a number of years. But as the average temperatures continue to rise this century, we will keep setting more record highs.”
An expanding ratio
The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s. The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s.
Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two.
Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl notes.
“One of the messages of this study is that you still get cold days,” Meehl says. “Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we’re setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there’s a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows.”
Millions of readings from weather stations across the country
The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results. The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations, or other factors.
Meehl and his colleagues then used temperature simulations from the Community Climate System Model to compute daily record highs and lows under current and future atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
About the article
Title: “The relative increase of record high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the U.S.”
Authors: Gerald A. Meehl, Claudia Tebaldi, Guy Walton, David Easterling, and Larry McDaniel
Publication: Geophysical Research Letters (in press)
The question isn’t whether there are record highs vs. lows but whether there are more record positive vs. record negative deviations from the upward trend line.
There isn’t here, in the longest running temperature record:
http://i35.tinypic.com/2db1d89.jpg
Gee, how convenient they didn’t chart it back to the 1930s… wonder why?
Layne, you beat me to it.
I’d also like to see the 30’s and 40’s. Might see a sine wave pattern.
And what happened in the 60’s and 70’s? Was CO2 decreasing?
Another BS cherry picked study.
A small request to nudge the surfacestations project forward a bit: I am holding site pictures for St. John (WA, replacement for Colfax), Salinas (UT, replacement for Loa), and Pearce-Sunsites (AZ, replacement for Douglas). Albums are needed so I can upload….
That very old thermometer record shows the recovery from the Little Ice Age very nicely. (why else would the trend be up?)
I would assume if you have heat sinks surrounding tons of weather stations, then you will have a lot of record highs.
It’s even more normal than the longest running record indicates.
Take out or compensate the urban/airportized readings, take out or compensate the Fire Weather Stations in the Forests, and you have nothing to write home about.
No, Al, the sky isn’t burning. It’s quite grey and getting colder.
Remember to tell your grandkids about the good old days, when they had real summers and life was good.
Having just come from Revkin’s blog, I’m tempted to start by the de rigeur “sigh”, but I’m trying to hold onto my IQ.
Anyway, am I correct in that “record highs” are from the uncorrected, unhomogenized data?
Of course, why bother thinking, when some folks don’t even believe there could possibly be a UHI that might have changed over the last several decades, even in Phoenix!
Well, in addition to screwing up the italics [FIXED], I guess I should have said “unadjusted” rather than “uncorrected”.
Sigh… 🙂
I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that you would expect more record highs than lows as long as the yearly average temperature is higher than the average of these yearly averages over the years that we are looking at. Even if it has cooled slightly it is still hotter than it was in the mid seventies, thus your upward fluxes will take you into record territory, and your downward fluxes will not.
If some weather stations are at or near airports, those well drained, concrete paved artificial deserts (notning grows there) isn’t this to be expected?
While not all situations with poorly sited weather stations affect trends, a weather station like this one at the University of Arizona’s parking lot in front of the atmospheric science department is represenative of the kinds of problems that would lead to an increased number of new high temperature records set.
Spelling correction……….representative………..(please delete)
SLoppy agenda driven substandard garbage.
And paid for with your taxes.
Roll on Anthony’s publication.
Hopelessly flawed is an inappropriate moniker.
I’d go with wilful scientific negligence myself.
Amazing, the power of cognitive dissonance to allow true believers to delude themselves.
If some weather stations are at or near airports, those well drained, concrete paved artificial deserts (notning grows there) isn’t this to be expected?
Airports are an odd case. The “siting” is above average. But recent increase in air traffic and HO83 equipment issues have caused the records to show a much greater increase against their backgrounds than non-airport stations.
you would expect more record highs than lows as long as the yearly average temperature is higher than the average of these yearly averages over the years that we are looking at.
Yes. And a very important point.
The graph shows a nice correlation with the COOL PDO followed by the WARM PDO….
Like some of the posts above, – the time frame is too short.
The graph would look more interesting if overlayed with the PDO and CO2 lines.
Follow the money – this study was partially funded by http://www.climatecentral.org/
Of course if found a ‘warming bias’… what’s interesting is the chart is deceptive, the bars aren’t based on actual number of records just the ‘ratio’. There’s no note of how many new low records were set, and the 2000 decade is 3 months shorter than any other decade and given that October which was teh coldest in US history gets omitted that way the numbers are skewed incorrectly.
Layne Blanchard (15:55:00) – Possibly because it might reveal some inconvenient truths .
I am not surprised at the timing of this report about extreme temperature change. I would think that Gerald would have at least waited until THIS decade was over, before reporting on it.
Its kind of silly really. Suppose it’s better to show a multi decadal warming trend, than report how the last year of this decade is shaping up to produce more cold temperature extremes than highs. Guess he couldn’t wait 2 more months.
No, I don’t believe them
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/18/a-cold-start-to-fall-over-4500-new-snowfall-low-temp-and-lowest-max-temp-records-set-in-the-usa-this-last-week/#more-11803
It’s very disturbing how many of them there are, and in what positions of influence. Are the malicious, or just delusional? And why?
I guess that just goes to show that you take man out of the dark ages, but you can’t take the dark ages out of (some) men.
So no bias or cherry-picking there then /sarc
DaveE.
So the study team writes, “Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two.”
But of course nothing is said about lowest maximum temperatures.
Fascinating the team whips this report out, just when LM temps ripped HM temps all to shreds.
This is pure propaganda and just the kind of misleading garbage that fails to pass the scrutiny of MSM.
Most of the time I can see the flaws in climate scare stories but this is the umpteenth time I have seen one, not known what the catch is, came to this site and found the answer at the top of the page. I left a link to this site in the comment section of the originating article (they at least allow critical comments) along with the flaw in the story.
Well done. This site is always on top of the latest climate scams. Very valuable.
Well how amazing; with that highly detailed data consisting of six data points.
The 1950s, 1960s to 1970 s show a definite clearly visible downward trend, of both the record highs, and the record lows; yet we had rapidly rising CO2 all through that period, and if I’m not mistaken, the 1957/58 sunspot peak count was an all time record for the last 4.5 billion years or as far back as we have been counting sunspots. You would have thought that the temperature would be going up at that time ratther than down.
Looks more sinusoidal to me than straight line; so how many cycles of this oscillation will occur before 2100; and what phase will we be in then, in order to meet the IPCC’s predicted; excuse me projected 3-10 deg C rise that their accurate computer models project.
You know, it’s becoming a giant game of whack-a-mole. Every time nature shows the “science” is lacking, along comes more waterboarding of the data. In ten years time, we’ll be hearing about the bidecadal data.
By that time, all of the thermometers will be sited at airports, and will be showing the hottest twenty year period ever.
Even though Copenhagen may not live up to the alarmists expectations, they still have until 2012 to ratify a successor to Kyoto, and next year is supposed to be the peak of El Nino. So expect a conference next year held in some hot and sweaty part of the world.
Not having studied the UHI effect but having a basic idea of what it is about … given the 50 year time span and the massive increase in urbanisation over that periord, wouldn’t the UHI effect alone tend to decrease the liklihood of record lows resulting in the changed ratio of RH:RL (Record High: Record Low)?
Interesting to see the station at one of my former unis… there was a lot of construction in the vicinity of that thermometer in the late 80s when I was at the U of A.
18th vs 20th century temps compared:
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/01/british-record/
This guy doesn’t believe them either, and he’s got the data to back it up.
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2007/02/extreme-temperatures-wheres-global.html
A glimpse behind the curtain:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/
The perversion of scientific integrity is staggering.
For heaven’s sake. This is by far the poorest study I have ever seen. No better than a grade school graph problem. And this low, low, low level scientific investigation gets published????????
They need to go back to the 1930s and 40s. Quitting when they did was curious, because they end up comparing a relatively mild (even cooling) period to a dramatically warming period. Apples to apples says you need to include the early 20th century warming period too.
For a view of the U of A site on Google Earth go to:
32°13’45.77″N
110°57’15.62″W
I’d put a link here but I am not sure how to code it in. It’s a shame none of the buildings in the area have been 3D’d on Google Earth but you can get an idea of the environment by clicking on the Gould-Simpson Building photographs just next to the thermometer site. Excellent representative site…
The satellite data will keep the surface stations (more or less) honest. But if it weren’t for the sats, I’d never trust the data.
The point was made earlier. We are at a warmer plateau. So it takes a huge cool anomaly to set a record, but only a very slight warming anomaly. That is what is going on here.
It’s not lying, but it seems to be desperately trying to avoid the fact that there is a slight cooling trend. That routine is getting old. heck, we could be setting new annual warming records every year and still fall ‘way short of IPCC projections. It all depends on the slope.
This is what bothers me:People listen to the BS-yet we are not even looking at the
possibility of extended cold.I frantically prepared my place for cold tonight, after finally
feeling better due to a pulled muscle. Winter’s here, and I hope it awakens more
to the possibility of real,dangerous ,cold…
Lubos Motl has a good summary of what to look for in determining whether the record highs and or lows are really meaningful, or just smoke and mirrors.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/01/record-cold-temperatures-in-2009.html
Any time you add more data points you’re going to get more “records”. In either direction, this is much ado about nothing.
Call me when the air temps over the entire Pacific Ocean show the same numbers.
Beat me to that one (also)
Strange how that base line (50-80) crops up so often.
Failure to address known and documented flaws with the source data makes this a junior high school science project and not professional research — no matter how fancy the computer model they drag in to give the impression of sophistication.
With the Surfacestations project information is taken into account, these results show more support for the measurement of station siting flaws than they do of GHG warming.
Let us not forget.
It’s a record!
It must be the salt content of the surrounding asphalt that is causing the readings to show warming. You know, the “jiffy pop theory”. Thought I would post it before Yaakoba does, …
Anthony,
Is Andrew Revkin foaming at the mouth, right now?
REPLY: No just unable to see the larger picture. – anthony
Talk about useless BS –
Nothing but more NCAR propaganda –
Unfortunately, about half of the US useful breathers believe this rubbish…
Anyone playing with a full deck can see directly through the game.
Of course it is cherry picked… we are nowhere near ‘record’ temps… high or low… no current viking farms on Greenland and no current mid-west glacial activity…(maybe I missed the news?)
How any one with a brain can put this tripe out is beyond me… last time I checked the ‘consensus report’ the Earth is Billions of years old and these ‘educated?’ clowns ignore all but 50-60 years – of that history… how do they find the way home at nite?… much less sleep soundly?
PS. – Thank You Anthony for keeping us posted!
ONE OF ANTHONY’S OLDER POSTS ON WHAT THE STATISTICS SAY WE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/27/are-record-temperatures-abnormal/#more-7385
Layne Blanchard (15:55:00) :
I posted the data from Britain going back to 1800, above. Here it is again.
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/01/british-record/
There is no difference between 19th and 20th century over the whole 200 years.
I still can’t believe the…
Does this mean that there were no records prior to 1950 for the stations they focused on?
DaveE.
Classic cherry picking. If you do as Bruce Hall has done and look back to the full length of the record, it looks like this:
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2009/01/where-is-global-warming-extreme_19.html
Nothing like The report at all.
But all they have shown is that the coldest days are getting warmer and the warmest days are too. But the ratio change means that the colder days are warming faster than the warmest days. A climate that is getting less extreme. What’s wrong with that?
It is runaway normalcy !!! ……… 8^D
RE:”Anthony,
Is Andrew Revkin foaming at the mouth, right now?
REPLY: No just unable to see the larger picture. – anthony”
Unable or just UNWILLING????
WxMark
The study says record highs are not increasing. Just record lows are descreaing because it isn’t cooling at night.
Isn’t that the classic UHI signature as the heat radiates from ashpalt, brick and buildings?
Does it really need scientists to produce a workpiece like that?
I am surprised. Seems to be a great time getting a doctor title in climatology.
Should I try?
I used to do shortwave radio in a German weatherstation building, with nothing but meadows around for miles. Today, 20 years later, there is industry, car dealerships, hundreds of buildings all over this place.
The weather station has not moved. I can imagine how the temperatures there are today, compared with the past.
It’s apples and oranges.
From the above article:
“This indicates that much of the nation’s warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.”
Higher overnight lows? Could this possible be due to all of the new concrete and asphalt that was not around 50 years ago? It doesn’t take a climate scientist to know that concrete retains heat pretty well, just check with the local population of reptiles.
Lennart Bilén (16:29:52) :
If some weather stations are at or near airports, those well drained, concrete paved artificial deserts (notning grows there) isn’t this to be expected?
A very large percentage are at airports, and it is rising. Soon the ONLY temperatures from land stations in the pacific will be from Airports:
You are going to LOVE this: All Pacific Weather Service Offices to be located at Airports
http://www.faa.gov/news/conferences_events/pacific_aviation/agenda/media/NWS.pdf
REPLY: OMG, how could they! Well, at least it will be easy to identify what stations have an Airport Heat Island bias 8-{ ems.
From the comments section of:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/gistemp-islands-in-the-sun/
When I get a chance, I can cook up an “airport records as percent of total” report from GIStemp files…
I live near another great example of station siting and UHI: State College, PA, where the official temperature is taken on the Penn State Campus. The location of the weather station is near a golf course and there is a slight slope that in the past allowed cool air to drain downhill from the golf course toward the weather station on nights with good radiational cooling conditions. Several years ago a huge building was erected next to the weather station and it apparently is very effective at blocking the flow of cool air from the golf course. Temperatures on clear, calm nights run several degrees warmer than they did in the past. It is like pulling teeth to get record lows now, especially in the winter. Last winter a notable example was on January 17th, when the low at Penn State was -3 while much of the surrounding area was 10-20 below zero, even towns and airports. What is really amazing here is that the construction of one building near the weather station has greatly lowered the chances for record lows relative to the past. If the pace of building in the last couple of decades in the rest of the country has been anything like what I have seen in the places where I have lived, that could account for a large portion of the change shown in this study.
Hrmph. Cryptic but easier than I thought. I had made this rather crude file where I just glued all the “station information” onto each data record for each reported temperature. Horridly wasteful of disk space (then again, if it’s using a dimes worth of space I’ll be amazed… disk has gotten dirt cheap…).
Anyway, I did this for a quick “one off” report or three… and now it’s become a central feature of several investigative / reporting approaches. I’d be embarrassed about the crude approach if it were not just so darned useful for things like this. A “one off” how many airports? Question.
So I can find all records in a year with the UNIX “grep” command. I look for any leading 12 characters (country code, station ID, mod flag) then the four digits of the year I care about. I chose 2008 as a recent year. I then send those records into a ‘cut’ command that only passes one character, the “AirStation Flag”. While some airports are not flagged with A for Airstation, many, perhaps most, are. We will have a (probably small) undercount of airports. We then pass those into “wc -l” that counts the number of lines (and so, the number of airports that reported. Each site reports one time per year with 12 monthly average values on the line). A very similar thing is done, but we give ‘grep’ the “-v” flag for “everything OTHER THAN A” to get the non-airports.
The results are:
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………2008 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148 | grep A | wc -l
593
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………2008 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148| grep -v A | wc -l
612
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$
So we have 1205 total stations that make it all the way through the “STEP – UHI correction and pitch out short records” and the “STEP1 splice and dice”.
Of those, about 1/2 are Airports.
Back in 1989, before The Great Dying of Thermometers, we have:
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………1989 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148 | grep A | wc -l
1430
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………1989 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148 | grep -v A | wc -l
2943
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$
so: 4373 total, of which 1430 are AirStations. About 1/3.
I would consider a rise in the percentage of thermometers at airports from 33% to 50% a significant change…
“Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.” TOS “The City on the Edge of Forever”…
We’ve been told by the trolls we can’t go just by what’s happening in the USA. So, according to them, this work is meaningless.
That ought to have said”
“STEP 2 – UHI correction and pitch out short records”…
To make up for the “correction note” here is 1959. now you can plot airport growth vs ‘records set” 😉
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………1959 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148 | grep A | wc -l
1215
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$ grep …………1959 v2.step2.inv.id.withlat | cut -b 148 | grep -v A | wc -l
2997
[chiefio@tubularbells tmp]$
So 4212 and about 29%. Looks to me like a consistent pattern. Also you get to add in the conversion from prop jobs to jet exhaust and the rapid growth in volume of traffic and airport size over time too…
But you can take solace in the fact that GIStemp uses airports as rural reference stations for the UHI calculation, so we’re really just adding a higher percentage of “rural” to the record /sarcoff>
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
Just for giggles,I went to the Weatherundergound .com site for LaGrande, Oregon.
I live one block from Central school which has a MesoWest remote (on top of the
school roof no less,) and the local Airport, which is the location of the ASOS.
Ok,the Airport sits at the very southern end of the Grande Ronde Valley.At the mouth of Ladd Cayon some oh,three miles away.Currently the wind is calm at the Airport.(rare enough) and the Temp is 28F. Here,on the roof of Central School , it is 35F.a difference of 7F. This is not unusual.My wife and I love this neighborhood because it is somewhat protected and warmer,the Grade School,High School,and Middle School, all are within a four block radius of my home all with physical plants, acres of pavment, along with- less than 1/4 mile the Grande Ronde Hospital-also with Physical plant.
While this is a rough study of UHi, I think it does ,modestly illustrate why we need to
sort out UHi from the chaff.Unlike the NCAR report.
E.M.Smith (20:58:30) :
Interesting & revealing chief 🙂
I wouldn’t be embarrassed about quick & dirty though.
Back in the day, I’d do a Q&D proof of concept in QB4 & later refine in assembler & C. Often I’d leave a QB front end for ease of modification.
DaveE.
Bruce (19:51:52) :
The study says record highs are not increasing. Just record lows are descreaing because it isn’t cooling at night.
Isn’t that the classic UHI signature as the heat radiates from ashpalt, brick and buildings?
While this may be the case, that will get lost in an explanation to the average person.
What will not be lost with the average person is the clear fact that winters are becoming longer and harsher, and summers are mild with shorter growing seasons.
Anyone hearing this news about heat records will intuitively know there’s something not quite right with it because it doesn’t add up with what’s happening in the real world they live in every day.
(but I think trolls will be dancing under their bridges with glee over the study)
David Alan (16:56:20) :
I am not surprised at the timing of this report about extreme temperature change…. Guess he couldn’t wait 2 more months.
Copenhagen?
Well now I’ve done it. I’ve made them into standard commands now…
$ airport 1949
907
$ nairp 1949
2368
total of 3275 and percent of 27.7 %
$ airport 1969
1379
$ nairp 1969
3450
total of 4829 and percent of 28.6%
$ airport 1979
1175
$ nairp 1979
3188
total of 4363 and percent of 26.9%
(Hmmm Arab Oil Embargo and major recession… did some airports go out of business? )
$ airport 1999
885
$ nairp 1999
1539
total of 2424 and percent of 36.5%
So that completes the environment for the “records set” graph up top. A correlation graph would be very interesting… and the trend continues even from 2008 to 2009. As of now, more than half of all the thermometer records that make it to the “anomaly map” step are at / from Airports.
Got to make it hard to find a really “rural” location for the GIStemp UHI method (that adjusts stations based on ‘nearby rural’ stations up to 1000 km away and often airports… that now will be lots of airports…)
$ airport 2009
575
$ nairp 2009
540
total of 1115 and percent of 51.6%
Ya think that might be an issue? … Ya think?
As a couple of people have already said–they did leave out the 30’s, the Dust Bowl years, of the United States.
That is a serious vulnerability of the study. It could make it difficult to convince people it is warmer now than it has ever been before in the United States since everyone knows about the dust storms of the 1930’s.
It is a curious red flag that that time period is not included in this work.
“Pay no attention to those black blizzards behind the curtain…”
Dammit!!
I think I’m the only one to comment on this & I’ve tried to find out!
Did the stations they focused on even HAVE records prior to 1950
DaveE.
Let me clarify.
They focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950.!!
No mention of whether they had been operating before 1950!
That would explain roughly 1:1 high & low records in the ’50s.
More cooling in ’60s & ’70s, obviously!
After that, equally obvious.
DaveE.
“yonason (17:04:17) :
No, I don’t believe them
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/18/a-cold-start-to-fall-over-4500-new-snowfall-low-temp-and-lowest-max-temp-records-set-in-the-usa-this-last-week/#more-11803
It’s very disturbing how many of them there are, and in what positions of influence. Are the malicious, or just delusional? And why?”
Maybe they want to ensure future funding…
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/apr09/presentations/ncar_budget.pdf
I’ve made some Mathematica calculations of the “record high vs record low” frequencies – showing that especially the frequency of the cold records is expected to brutally decrease if the underlying warming trend (regardless of the cause) is being accumulated over an increasing period of time. See my comments at
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/warm-records-vs-cold-records.html
These results are no “warning signs”. They’re just straightforward implications of mathematics that can translate one way of parameterize the overall warming into another way. The map is almost always nonlinear and it tells us nothing about the causes of the “non-random” changes. (They can still arise as noise but not white noise.)
Aırport monıtorıng statıons.
Yes, when we take off, the performance calculatıons requıre the temperature above a vast expanse of concrete – because that ıs what we are usıng to take off on. Probably a completely dıfferent temperature to normal ambıent.
Plus, there ıs an awful lot of heat generated around an aırport. You can feel great gusts of manmade warm aır bıllowıng across the aırcraft stands.
.
yonason (19:24:46) :
Layne Blanchard (15:55:00) :
I posted the data from Britain going back to 1800, above. Here it is again.
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/01/british-record/
There is no difference between 19th and 20th century over the whole 200 years.
.
.
But ıf you look at the Wıkı versıon of the CET, there suddenly ıs a great rıse ın temperature. How come?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CET_Full_Temperature_Yearly.png
.
The Hadley CET graph also shows a sudden rıse.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
Here ıs some of the raw data for the CET. Now the scales may be a bıt smaller, but can you see a great rıse ın temperature ın the 1980s??
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/cet/
So how dıd the Hadley offıcıal graph suddenly develop that great rıse ın temperature??
.
Same issue in Holland, but vastly greater: http://benlanka.tweakdsl.nl/climate/datumrecords.png shows the distribution of high and low day records (min, max, average daily temperature).
To attribute this phenomenon to measurements gone awry is obvious nonsense. That would, e.g., leave only one explanation for the melting of glaciers worldwide: that the gnomes have reduced the freezing point of water.
Also worldwide the temperaturemeasurements would have gone awry only in the last two decades or so, how strange.
If one doubts the temperature measurements one can look at proxies, no? Proxies like changing ecosystems or melting ice might do well. Even in the USA, where climate change seems to lag the rest of the world (in Holland on the contrary it’s going faster).
This is pure propaganda and someone should sew them for it.
3 out of 4 data sets show NO PROOF of any warming during the past 15 years:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/no-warming-for-fifteen-years/
Ralph (02:06:54) :
Aırport monıtorıng statıons…Probably a completely dıfferent temperature to normal ambıent.
Absolutely correct, and that’s common knowledge in the aviation community.
For the anecdotal file, typical daily temperatures off-airfield here (Kirkuk, Iraq) are 5-to-8 degrees C *cooler* than temperatures on the ramp and on the runway.
Anthony: I have the record hi and lo temperatures for each day of the year, it covers years 1891 to 2009 for Norfolk, Nebraska on a xl spreadsheet. Quite interesting.
If you could send me your E-mail I could forward it.
This morning the local television news reported the current temperature at the station was 31 degrees, but they also noted that the airport–perhaps 15 miles away–was reporting 42 degrees. All surrounding counties were reporting temperatures in the low 30s. Either the airport was experiencing a bubble of warmer air or the integrity of their thermometer is suspect.
It is not clear to me how the 1800 sites were selected for the survey. I see from AWs project page that ther are around 9000 US sites in total. Is this yet another case of cherry picking compounding naive acceptance of records at face value.
On a completely separate point, but raised by the computer modelling used above, a question to all the climate professionals and statisticians out there: Has a linear trend ever been observed historically over any extended period of time, based on true records?
I suspect the answer is no, and if this is the case, what justification is there for using them predictively?
‘Sew’, Ron? Nice one 🙂
Eindhoven just broke the november second decade record, +17.3° up from +17.1° C in 1995; more stations will follow tomorrow.
RRKampen, I am sick and tired of your BS. You do not respond to anyones refutations and you do not provide any substantive proof of your claims. To dismiss temperature monitoring inaccuracies as nonsense, without explaining why it is nonsense, does not wash. As I said previously, I feel sorry for you. I hope you do not work in this field, as you are unqualified.
Anthony-
Maybe I’m being overly picky, but in your stations review: for all the charts at the end of the report, is that the raw data or homogenized data? Would that be important to note in the report?
REPLY: Well there are several charts in the report, without know which ones you are referring to I can’t say. If you are referring to station siting data the question is moot, since it is never homogenized. – Anthony
(Corrected version, once more I forgot a closing tag for italics)
Re: Ralph (02:23:18) :
Here ıs some of the raw data for the CET. Now the scales may be a bıt smaller, but can you see a great rıse ın temperature ın the 1980s??
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/cet/
So how dıd the Hadley offıcıal graph suddenly develop that great rıse ın temperature??
Same pattern in Holland. We call it the ‘temperature jump’ and it is as of 1988.
It is real.
Gene:
It’s not just the dust bowl (which didn’t just affect the US if I recall, Australia was also hard hit).
This was posted earlier, and verifies that many of the extreme temperatures were observed during that period.
It’s not just a black eye for the study, it is a fatal flaw.
Since they had all the data they should have easily been able to break down the last 10 years individually (2000-2009). I wonder why they didn’t show that chart?
RR Kampen (05:24:49) :
‘Sew’, Ron? Nice one 🙂
“Eindhoven just broke the november second decade record, +17.3° up from +17.1° C in 1995; more stations will follow tomorrow”.
So what, is the town on fire, are people dying? Do we have to raise the dykes by 7 meter and close down Pernis, Schiphol and distribute personal carbon allowances?
Take all cars from the roads and drive horse carts again?
Your pushing pure alarmism.
Ok, I’ll be more specific. 🙂 Starting on page 18 through page 28, From GISS raw and adjusted station data is available. Just wondering which data you use for those temperature charts.
REPLY: raw data from GISS.
Ron, you are pushing paranoia! Where have I ever posted ‘alarm’?? Have you remembered I am on Lomborg’s side as to taking measures against AGW? Will you remember imo Kyoto was and is total rubbish? Thank you. Back to temperature and (global) climate (change) then.
David Ball, I do not always have the time to sort out nonsense refutations. Also I do not tend to answer identical questions more than once.
If ever you can prove temperature monitorings all over the world to have gone wrong all of a sudden in the past few decades, then you will have to prove the freezing point of water went down in just about all of the mountain regions in the world. How is that for a refutation of the idea that all temperature monitoring in the world is inaccurate?
REPLY: Now I’m with David, you’re either an idiot or a zealot incapable of assimilating information. Find someplace else to spew nonsense. – Anthony Watts
Will do, Anthony – this is my last post here. If clear contradictions must make a case, I must have strayed into a church. Goodbye.
REPLY: Taking two unrelated things, measurement environment and a physical law, and demanding the physical law be changed in order to prove the fault of the measurement environment is in fact idiocy and the sort of thing we’ve seen from church before. Such as the edict Galileo had to endure at the hands of the church. His observations were inconvenient, so the church made him say that the physical laws he observed don’t exist. AGW is the new earth centered religion and you’re a cardinal. Congratulations. – Anthony
Then I think you missed my irony. I will state my point without the irony then, for clarity.
If global temperature goes up, there will globally be physical consequences of that.
If global temperature does not change, there will globally be no temperature-related physical changes.
Now what we see is that according to temperature observations, temperatures are going up, as e.g. corroborated by the article opening this thread.
Obviously the possibility instrumental error has to be researched, I can only applaud that.
But if you see physical changes all over the globe which obviously relate to a rise in temperature – e.g. glaciers are receding all over the world with only very few and isolated exceptions – then the thermometer readings indicating a rising trend MUST imply the existence of a REAL phenomenon: real temperature rise.
It MUST imply that IF there is inaccuracy in temperature monitoring, these errors can actually only UNDERestimate the factual temperature increase.
I am leaving out the unlikely fact that apparently virtually all instrumentation virtually all over the world, rural places or not, changed more or less simultaneously as of the latter couple of decades.
I am leaving out the unlikely fact that every shrinking glacier seems to have its own local explanation for shrinking, Kilimanjaro thus, Bolivian Andes so, Himalaya other et cetera – I’m granting you all that.
Many people here are quite knowledgeable qua climate. Virtually none seem to appreciate this simple reasoning though. Contrary so: some get mad at me. THAT is like religious authority, the type of authority that demands me to follow suit in crooked reasoning and to question none. Why?
Now as an aside – I wonder where I’ve left the ‘A’ of AGW in the above! Where’s the alarm?
RR Kampen (07:59:34):
Kampen says he’s stating what he predicts will happen for “clarity”. In fact, what he is demonstrating is that he is controlled by Cognitive Dissonance [CD].
Notice that Kampen does not even admit the third possibility: that the global temperature could decline — yet he labels as ‘religious’ anyone who disagrees with his “simple reasoning”.
A typical response of those afflicted with CD is the use of psychological projection: imputing their own faults onto others. In this instance, Mr Kampen’s own religious belief that global temperatures can only go up, or at the very worst, will stay the same, perfectly demonstrates the closed mind explained in Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer.
Kampen can not even admit the possibility that global temperatures could decline — despite the strong empirical evidence that the planet has already been cooling for most of the past decade. Belief is everything, and facts are simply entities to be juggled until they make sense to the CD ravaged mind.
RR Kampen: Maybe you’re getting harsh comments because you’re often posting a lot of nonsense without checking sources properly. Please see my comments in the October weather thread, where you e.g. claimed that only the northernmost part of Scandinavia was colder than normal in October, when in fact the /southern/ part (at least parts of southern Norway and the whole of Denmark) was colder than normal while the northernmost part was slightly above normal. Germany was also below normal. Granted, the Netherlands was slightly above normal, but just slightly.
RR Kampen you must be new to this site. Anyone with half a brain if they have followed this site will see for themselves that most of the temps monitors, and not just in the U S, are put in warm biased areas, besides that the fact they closed the rural sites or they just close the monitor down altogether. Look at the pictures this site has shown. These pictures arn’t doctored either. On roof tops, next to air condition units, and as the report shows, over asphalt parking lots.
In 1950, great numbers of city streets in a good many cities were constructed of Portland Cement (white) concrete. These were converted over the years to asphalt concrete, substantially increasing the heat island effect. From 1950 to a few years ago, growth of urban areas increased with the continuing housing boom. Houses constructed with asphalt shingles, streets paved with asphalt concrete. Along the San Bernardo freeway, from San Bernardino, CA to Los Angeles, only orange groves to be seen on both sides in 1958. As of today, nothing to be seen but housing tracts. More paved land, fewer green plants, increased temperatures. Heat Island Effect, Heat Island Effect Heat Island Effect.
As a transportation Engineer in about 1972, working for California Department of Transportation in Los Angeles, I made an estimate of how much asphalt concrete in paving there was then (streets and parking lots). My rough estimate (Los Angeles Air Basin) was at least 2300 square miles of asphalt concrete paving.
The conversion from both Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) and plain old sand and gravel parking lots to asphalt concrete paving and the constant increase in area of asphalt shingles was continuous and rapid during the period of time covered by this article, across the entire United States, as was the conversion from raw land or land used for agriculture to urbanization.
Given the huge difference of (increased) area which was converted from raw land, PCC streets and agricultural land to asphalt covered areas, I would have expected a relatively constant increase of temperature over the period of time covered.
I would imagine that the American Asphalt Institute would have good data as to the amount of asphalt which has been put in place over this period of time. While some of this would have been for repaving already existing asphalt concrete streets, most would have been new asphalt concrete covering of previously raw land, and increased area of asphalt shingled new housing. Asphalt, asphalt asphalt equals higher temps, higher temps higher temps. The change due to vast areas being covered with one asphalt covering or another has been tremendous over the last half Century over the entire United States.
My concern in 1972 over the large amounts of area being newly covered with asphalt concrete on a constant basis was that asphalt concrete emits hydrocarbons into the air, and while a small amount per square foot, in total the additional hydrocarbon emissions due to this source were very large. But I worked for what was essentially a highway building agency, there was little interest and a desire to not know. But this also added greatly to the Heat Island Effect in newly urbanized areas as well.
Roger Pielke Sr. reports on the bias and selectivity in climate reporting.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/bias-in-news-reporting/
Problematic and poorly done selective compilation of biased data gets more attention than seemingly solid science.
LarryOldtimer (09:15:01) :
Urban development is like a giant storage radiator, absorbs heat during the day, lets it out during the night, don`t you think they know this.
Thank you for the PDF. I had no idea it all started with whitewash. That’s appropriate!
Let’s hope that what begins with whitewash must end with the crumbling of the whole AGW edifice.
The infrared photography of the surface stations is a nice touch.
It would be gratifying to see Anthony Watts receive an honorary doctorate for this fine work.
I have lived in Las Vegas for 6 years now and am about 8 miles from the airport as the crow flies. The temperatures reported at the official weather station always seems about 4 to 6 degrees warmer than at our location at an elevation of about 2,700 feet, about a thousand feet above the airport and to the West. Anyway I dug around and found a very interesting history of weather reporting in Las Vegas(including a lot of pictures of the weather stations from way back to evidently current day) at:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/headlines/stationhistory.pdf
The bottom line is that the weather is evidently reported from the airport between the runways. Might account for warm temps, and especially warm evenings; around here after dark, you can feel the heat radiating from the concrete where ever you go.
{ RR Kampen (06:12:09) :
(Corrected version, once more I forgot a closing tag for italics)
Re: Ralph (02:23:18) :
Here ıs some of the raw data for the CET. Now the scales may be a bıt smaller, but can you see a great rıse ın temperature ın the 1980s??
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/cet/ }
Might it be something to do with the PDO.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/pdo.jpg
or the sun,
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/graph.jpg
Not central England urban just Armagh rural, nothing abnormal here.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/armagh_air_temp2.jpg
RR Kampen (02:43:09) :
To attribute this phenomenon to measurements gone awry is obvious nonsense. That would, e.g., leave only one explanation for the melting of glaciers worldwide: that the gnomes have reduced the freezing point of water.
Also worldwide the temperaturemeasurements would have gone awry only in the last two decades or so, how strange.
Do not post again concerning gisstemp and global temps until you at least visit cheifIO.wordpress.com. Then come back and refute what you see there. UHI is not the only problem. Gisstemp is unmitigated canine excrement (but at least the dog hasn’t eaten his data yet – as in England).
Hilarious. I didn’t know that a high temperature on a given day had any relevance on a high temperature on a different day in a different year.
This is one of those statistical constructions that’s supposed to seem just logical enough to pass for a valid point.
But all they’re doing is presenting the data in a manner that overemphasizes what we know to be warming in the late 1990’s that carried over into 2000. Makes things look worse than they are, but does not REPRESENT what they are.
As we all know, when you plot the ACTUAL temperatures this trend disappears.
I am waiting on the edge of my seat for the results after Steve McIntyre gets his hands on this data and rips this study to shreds, just like the Hockey Stick.
Indeed interesting that you started by investigating the effects of weathering of Stevenson screen whitewash. Last summer I observed another case of weathering which might be of interest.
The gallery has my long distance view of the Baker City, OR, ASOS at:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=71112
As can be seen, the ASOS is at the end of long unpaved road. This road, surfaced with crushed rock, runs roughly parallel to the main runway of the airport, and is thus probably aligned with the prevailing winds of the area. Were the prevailing winds from the southeast, I might assume a substantial effect on the AWOS temperature readings as the air picked up heat from the surface of the road. However, the prevailing winds appear to be from the northwest, so it may be a rare weather condition that would actually affect the record.
All the same, I noticed something interesting about that road: the surface rock has weathered (darkened) considerably since it was spread. Scratch the surface with your foot, and you will discover the rock immediately underneath is considerably lighter in color. You can see this in my gallery photo at:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=71137
(As I remember, the contrast was significantly greater than it appears in the picture.)
I am surprised that this crushed rock has weathered so much in a short period of time. It would be interesting to know how much the darkening changes the surface (rock) temperature on a calm day. On an occasional day when the wind runs along the road into the AWOS setup, could it fractionally raise the temperature? If so, that effect would have grown gradually over time, without showing a step function that NOAA’s ‘adjustments’ could detect.
After reading more comments let me say this. Most of the people here are great scientists, but naieve in the ways of conmen. Thus you are sent scrambling by claptrap from Kampen:
Here is the only response he ever needed:
The concept of a “Record” high, has absolutely no scientific, physical or thermodynamic relevance. It is a manmade designation, meaningless in the context of the earth’s climactic history. Thus any conversation applying relevance to climactic claims based on ‘record temperatures’ is inane. Period. And if you don’t understand why, you should never attempt to make a ‘scientific’ point again.
Conversation over. Was there really any reason to digress into arguing point for point with him on each progressively-more-ridiculous follow up comment? I mean he was talking about “gnomes” by the second paragraph. Did you really become scientists to discuss the implications of gnome activity on climate with [snip]?
My only criticism of this blog has always been the extent to which people get sucked into debating the fine details of an issue, even when that issue’s central premise is fundamentally koo-koo. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to beat blatant and purposeful contrarianism. They are trying to distract you from doing the meaningful work that will put them out of business…
Charles S, spare yourself the drama and read my post above.
“Record” is a manmade designation with no implication on the scientific facts. It is valueless designation.
What is the “record” speed of light? What is the “record” mass of an atom? What is the “record” spin of an electron?
Sounds really stupid without the fancy presentation and script doesn’t it.
This is snake oil. I don’t need Steve McIntyre to tell me that…
RR Kampen (07:36:50) :
“…this is my last post here….. Goodbye.”
You promise?
Midwest Mark (05:20:11) :
This morning the local television news reported the current temperature at the station was 31 degrees, but they also noted that the airport–perhaps 15 miles away–was reporting 42 degrees. All surrounding counties were reporting temperatures in the low 30s.
Now there’s something that really is global warming.
“This indicates that much of the nation’s warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows” isnt that when the urban heat island effect is most noticable!
Of course, close down lots of rural stations and this will also happen regardless of warming / changing climate etc….
If most of the increasing number of record high temperatures compared to the decreasing number of record low temperatures are attributable to the documented problems with surface station siting, how is it that most other trends related to temperature but not related to the surface stations are also in the direction that would be expected with warming? As an example, Stewart, Cayan, and Dettinger, Journal of Climate, 18, 1136-1155 (2005) described an earlier spring snowmelt pulse based on data from U.S. Geological Survey stream gauging stations in western North America from 1948 to 2002. It seems to me that if the temperature trends are due to inaccurate surface station data, then other climate trends should be a mixed bag (some negative, some positive), but I haven’t seen much discussion of cooling-related trends. That would be an interesting subject.
Oddly, all the highest temperature extremes by continents (except Antarctica)…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalextremes.html
… were recorded before the atmospheric CO2 concentration had reached 310 ppm.
About the 1988 step in european temperature records: Check Bob Tisdale’s postings on El Niño-induced step changes. A step change in 1988 in Europe may have been caused by the 1986-88 El Niño, check Bob’s figure 8, which shows the step change in mid-to-high TLT temperatures, and also note the El Chichon cooling preceding the 1988 temperature rise:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/10/countdown-to-an-unprecedented-warm-decade-2-months-to-go/
Casting doubt on the quality of the weather stations with a few examples is easy, but nobody has done the same high/low records calculations for the wheater stations that are known to be of perfect quality. If that has different results, it is a good argument, otherwise it is just tendentious.
Derek D has a good point. This is a tactic used by AGW proponents to distract from the main issues of a debate. The beauty of this blog is that we are allowed to voice our own opinion on climate subjects, either pro or con. This freedom allows the trolls or “debate de-railers” to throw a wrench into the workings of the discussion. A good analogy might be the freedom we enjoy in democratic societies also makes us vulnerable to terrorist activities. We cannot censor our freedom but have to be ever mindful of those who wish ill upon others.
Mr. Ace (10:58:06) Have you looked at the surfacestations site? I’m afraid that “casting doubt” has been left in the dust. If the claim of warming is ~0.7 C, there no more doubt to be cast. There are so few “perfect” weather stations that one could not make any global conclusions either way. I believe it was E.M.Smith who posted a video on WUWT? showing the number of weather stations that once existed but have since been “decommisioned”(any chance the moderators could help find that one?). It is frightening that some scientist still claim that surface records are a “good” indicator we can base policy on. Take a look at the siting issues on surfacestations.org. It is truly revealing. Cheers.
It should be no surprise that the corrupt meteorological database is still fatally flawed and continuing to produce artifacts of urbanization, not measurements of a useful nature. But I must say, warmer urban areas probably save lives in winter among the homeless comunity and save on everyone elses heating bills. The Science News editors apparently have no understanding of the width and depth of the propaganda being generated from the “publish or perish” monolith.
Re: TERRY46 (08:52:34) :
RR Kampen you must be new to this site. Anyone with half a brain if they have followed this site will see for themselves that most of the temps monitors, and not just in the U S, are put in warm biased areas, besides that the fact they closed the rural sites or they just close the monitor down altogether. Look at the pictures this site has shown. These pictures arn’t doctored either. On roof tops, next to air condition units, and as the report shows, over asphalt parking lots.
That may be so, which is why I’m talking about places where no urbanization exists. Mountain ranges: glaciers.
Now I’ll put the question to you again: if you believe thermometer readings are artefacting warming, then do you also believe the freezing point of water in glaciers has been reduced?
Or is it just too hard to put one and one together?
REPLY: This is probably the stupidest comment ever published here, which is the only reason I’m allowing it. – Anthony
Now I’ll put the question to you again: if you believe thermometer readings are artefacting warming, then do you also believe the freezing point of water in glaciers has been reduced?
Or is it just too hard to put one and one together?
REPLY: This is probably the stupidest comment ever published here, which is the only reason I’m allowing it. – Anthony
Then why not answer his question? It’s a very simple “Yes” or “No” answer. Naturally, if you answer “No” then you have to look for another explanation (other than warming) for all the shrinking glaciers. What could that be?
REPLY: Kampen and people like him, ignorantly assume that glacier loss has only to do with temperature. In fact, glaciers are precipitation driven, and when precipitation falls below the rate of sublimation and/or calving, loss occurs. There’s weather patterns involved in precip accumulation, it’s not just simple thermometry that Kampen ignorantly implies. – Anthony
Glaciers have receded and advanced throughout history. Kampen also ignores the fact that we are well within natural variability of the planet. This is well known and documentation can be found with very little effort. No one denies that warming has occurred, but it certainly is not “unprecedented”. These type of people act like nothing like this has ever happened before, and that is simply incorrect.
David, if no-one denies that warming has occurred, then why deny the fact that therefore record highs are at present outnumbering record lows, as evidenced by thermometer readings that you apparently do deem correct?
None of my postings here have ever referred to the question whether present warming is or is not ‘unique’ in history. You made that up. You do not know ‘my kind of people’, this is proven hereby. So let’s quit the ad hominems, shall we?
RRKampen , record highs are exactly what I am talking about. These are not “unprecedented” and thereby make your point moot. You are pushing an agenda that is harmful to all , and yet do not seem to understand the harm you are causing. All the posts I have read from you are alarmist in nature, with little or no evidence to substantiate this position. To form policy on something that is supposed to happen is illogical and wasteful. To say that “record highs are outnumbering record lows” is disingenuous and misleading. You are anthropomorphising climate. Stop ignoring the paleo record and try to understand our place in this record. Nice try at evading the substance of my post.
David Ball (15:22:54)
If you compile the records based on the 10% best stations (Class 1 and Class 2) Count the high/low records and see if the result is different. If you have the data that can not be that hard. If you have not done this calculation, there is no way you can tell whether ‘quality’ has a significant impact on this statistic.
David, what harm am I causing? Do you feel harmed by my disagreeing with you? It’s a free world, does that harm you? Would you rather have a world in which I ‘disappear’ if I’m so stupid to disagree with you? Please answer this. You’ve posted enough rubbish about me to make some amends.
Here’s the graph for Holland: http://benlanka.tweakdsl.nl/climate/datumrecords.png .
And you what? This de facto climate change is reflected in observables re nature and agriculture in Holland. These observables are unprecedented in the agricultural written history of this country.
No reason for alarm. It’s just reality. I’m not dying from it, I’m just interested in climate and climate change.
Next time you write I’m ‘alarmist’ with posts like this, I will point you out as liar. Be warned.
If a passive parking lot, or tarmac can radiate heat AND cold, without bias, then surely radiant coolers will be the new rage (much quieter than compressor driven AC units).
Oh and now the laws of physics have been rewritten in committee (COP), Cold air rises, so we can officially use Cold-air ballons for traveling about the globe, eliminating the need to travel with politicians as in the old Hot-air ballon days.
When can I get some of those heat/cool baseboard radiators for my home and office. Do they require special chemistry (a.k.a. Goreanium), or just pain H2O?
Does anyone know if Goreanium is toxic? Is it correct to assume Goreanium is overweight AND full of BS? (a bit like moi…)